Spatial conservation action planning in heterogenous landscapes

Abstract

A key challenge in conservation is the efficient allocation of limited resources to maximise benefits for biodiversity. Decision-support tools that account for landscape heterogeneity are needed to identify spatially-explicit actions that will achieve the greatest biodiversity benefits with available resources. We developed a raster-based, landscape-scale, spatial conservation action planning tool (SCAP) that offers significant advances for prioritising local and regional scale conservation actions in heterogenous landscapes. The SCAP tool was developed for the state of Victoria, Australia, to integrate heterogeneity of landscapes, species distributions, threats, and management costs and ben..